


the jazz electric, apathetic

by Verdantia



Category: Darker Than Black
Genre: Gate-energy, Gen, I tagged everyone that appears but full disclosure this is mostly just Hei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:35:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25911451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verdantia/pseuds/Verdantia
Summary: Smoke curled lazily towards the ceiling, coating the atmosphere in a slick-hazy antipathy that sidled into his lungs and hung there, heavy. The lighting was a cloudy amber, and shrouded as much as illuminated both animated and sullen faces alike...In which Hei and team are on a job, and things go about as well as they usually do.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	the jazz electric, apathetic

Smoke curled lazily towards the ceiling, coating the atmosphere in a slick-hazy antipathy that sidled into his lungs and hung there, heavy. The lighting was a cloudy amber, and shrouded as much as illuminated both animated and sullen faces alike. An electric jazz quartet played in the corner. Despite their presence, the music hardly energized the establishment at all. Rather, a bubble of apathy seemed to muffle the human crowd that was present.

Hei was… not nervous. Rather, he was alert. Coiled. He was a predator in an unknown territory, perfume occasionally drifting over to sting his nose. “Do we really need to be here?”  


The only reply he received was an odd up-twisting of the mouth, liminal between a smug smirk and a nostalgic smile. _Now_ he was nervous. He sat there, motionless, and could feel the Gate energy that trembled and sparked in his core start to shift. It spiraled, tight twisting circles that widened and then stretched until the pulsations quivered in harmony with his pulse. Hei gritted his teeth and felt that he might shake apart, dissolving into particles of dust and synchrotron radiation to pool on the grimy bar floor. The vibrations pulsed and sang, the Gate calling its own home with an imperial siren call. Each inhuman harmonic tore his flesh asunder, an in-physical agony that mercilessly began to batter at his sense of corporeality.  


Hei was not inexperienced in dealing with this particular foe. Sometimes he wondered if normal Contractors experienced this, but if they did none would willingly admit to such a weakness – so it remained an academic question for him, and as such useless. Regardless.

With practiced ease, Hei summoned the cold, frost-sparking determination that had kept him from shattering when he saw his sister kill his parents. He called the imagery, vibrant and bloody, and inside the vision he reached out to his sister and she electrocuted him too, the screaming electricity slamming thunder-bright and cruel through his skull. The strike shattered the eerie spiraling patterns of the Gate energy, and reluctantly it disappeared. Slowly, the siren call faded, warbling out on a hair-raising tritone that he just knew he’d be imagining at the edge of his hearing for the rest of the week.  


One of these days he’d figure out where it went – he’d tried poking it once, the ephemeral place that the energy-song seemed to drain into. It was not an experiment he wished to repeat.  


Hoping that the person across from him hadn’t noticed his lapse, Hei narrowed his eyes and gave her his best dead-eyed, Black Reaper stare. “If there’s no reason for me to be here, I’m leaving.”  


A decadent laugh, flawless magenta-pink lips pursing in amusement. She shifted her legs, idle and careless. “Don’t worry so much,” jewel-tones said. In the aftermath of his Gate-attack, Hei could almost see the sparkling amethyst vowels and topaz consonants drift away into the haze of the bar, mingling and casting a subtle glimmer inside the smoky haze. “I’m waiting for a particular someone. You’ll find it well worth your time, I’m sure.”

Hei did not deign to reply, but nor did he move to leave. Instead, he continued to stare at her across the table.

He was the Black Reaper. He could wait. And wait he did, five minutes ticking by, then ten, then twenty. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, and this time the movement was no flawless play at ease - it shouted her rising nerves as loud as if she’d drilled the message into his ear. 

Twenty minutes. Not bad, Hei thought. His stare almost always broke people down eventually – it was a special talent of his. Some thought that it was because he was a Contractor. Contractors had no soul, after all – and a soulless gaze raised the supernatural hackles on any sane person’s subconscious. He let them think that – the assumption suited him, of course. BK-201, the most deadly and ruthless Contractor of them all.

A crackle in his ear, a bell-clear voice that said one word: “Hei. ”

His team had finished the rest of the job. It was over, except for one last task.

He tilted his head at her, pulling his facial muscles into a purposefully fake smile. “I think I’ll take my leave now.”

She could sense something was wrong, desperately mustering the hypnotism of her seductive and elegant mien to try and delay him, honey-sweet and honey-slow. “Surely you can be bothered to wait but a few more minutes,” she tried, “I’m sure it won’t be that much longer.”

“Oh, it won’t,” he said, and reached out to pat her on the shoulder. Her eyes widened slightly, and then she slumped forward on the table. The slight smell of singed hair mingled flawlessly with the rest of the smoke in the air, and Hei slipped out of the bar, invisible in his unobtrusive anonymity. 

They regrouped an hour later at the usual park. Mao looked slightly ruffled and Huang disgruntled, but then, that was a normal state of affairs. Yin drifted in last, her seemingly aimless wandering bringing her to stand next to the small fountain. Hei watched her dip her fingers in, absently, and didn’t allow himself the luxury of wondering.

“What changed?” Hei said, flat and quiet. He could almost feel Huang bristle ever-so-slightly the way he always did when he heard Hei talk with his Contractor-blank voice.

The older man wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Change of orders. Decimation instead of take-over.”

“Ah.”  


Silence for a moment, then Huang again. “I take it you two _did_ eliminate your targets, right?” 

Hei let his unimpressed stare speak for itself, while Mao indignantly licked his paw. “What do you take us for, _human_?”

Huang waved a hand, “Yeah, yeah, heartless freaks, I know. Just confirming. That’s it, then. The Syndicate will have our next job… whenever they have it, I suppose.”

Hei nodded. 

Hei left.  


Hei lay down in his bare, desolate apartment and dreamed of Pai, and electricity, and screaming. 

_[whose screaming?]  
_

_[h i s o w n]_

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly: This work is brought to you by the phrase "jazz electric, apathetic" sticking in my brain and refusing to leave until I did something with it. Also by the fact that I feel bad about never doing anything with that other DtB short thing I posted, even though I've got about 500 words of plot/idea notes as well as additional scattered scenes written and just sitting in the original Word doc. Whoops. Hopefully nobody cares too much.
> 
> Secondly: I seem to delight in building on non-existent context, which... I think I'm sorry about? Depends on whether you find it makes the writing more interesting/suspenseful or just confusing/irritating. I'm all up in my head and genuinely can't tell.


End file.
